Is Green a Color?

If it were just a color, Greenland wouldn’t be moving massive mammoth meltdowns of glacial ice into the ocean at an accelerating pace. The Boston “green” Irish wouldn’t be enjoying the weather pattern that used to be associated with Philadelphia over three decades ago. But “green” is a political movement with razor blade cutting edges.

You see, all of the carbon dioxide (CO2) that has ever been produced and made its way to the upper atmosphere is still there. There are no chlorophyll-laden green plants that create oxygen from CO2 up there. While we need a bit of greenhouse gas to make this planet habitable, it would be too bitterly cold (-18 degrees Fahrenheit average) without it.

As the planet warms, however, and the permafrost melts, a vastly more destructive gas, methane (25 times heavier than CO2), is accelerating the process. Too much greenhouse gas changes climate everywhere, raises ocean levels, migrates disease-carrying insects to formerly inhospitable times, dries out regions and turns their “green” forests into kindling for wildfires, destroys farmland while creating new farmland… well, we all saw Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning slide show, we all know the rest. “Something must be done,” cry those who see a bleak change in the future without prompt action.

But since the Western world got rich in the Industrial Revolution, even though that happened a very long time ago, the developing world is wondering why environmental controls should be global, why they shouldn’t have their enriching “industrial revolution” just like the wealthy Western powers? Why are they being asked to pay the price without being afforded a comparable opportunity, they ask? So it pollutes the environment. That’s how the West got rich. Pretty tough to ask them to stay poor, not develop, and help Westerns live longer with clean air and a steady and predictable weather pattern, safe real estate on their coasts and no ranging wildfires in their forests. People in these developing nations have much shorter life expectancies and generally have little or no sympathy for richer nations, no matter the cause.

The managed depression has also been a blessing and a curse. With people buying and making products in vastly reduced numbers, as consumer consumption, travel, automobile use, etc. have fallen, there have been parallel benefits to the environment. But the curse has followed those nations, like China (the PRC), who finally recognized that their massive economic growth must be tempered with environmental consciousness or else their own people might not survive. With severe growth contraction, China has now put on hold or reduced on some of its own environmental standards – costly programs to implement – to re-prioritize towards growth instead. For them, it was simply a question of allocation of dwindling resources.

There is no joy to the vision of China building electric cars to compete in the international markets while the steel plants used in that manufacturing process belch toxins into the atmosphere. She builds a new coal-fired power plant almost every week. Being less reliant on smoke stack manufacturing, the United States has prioritized developing new technologies that create environmental sustainability, alternative energy and reduced automotive emissions… even as the multinational oil companies are fighting this trend.

China’s response is pragmatic, but still troublesome for us all (including China). The April 18^th New York Times: “The [PRC’s] Ministry of Environmental Protection, citing the urgency of fighting the downturn, adopted a new ‘green passage’ policy that speeds approval of industrial projects. In one three-day stretch late last year, it gave the green light to 93 new investment plans valued at $38 billion.

“Provincial environmental agencies quickly followed suit, cutting the allotted time limit to review environmental impact assessments from the maximum 60 days to as few as five days in one province. Here in Hebei [Province], the parched dust-bowl province that surrounds Beijing, officials announced approval of four new cement plants in a single day in January.” It’s not a simple decision by Chinese officials; it is a debate that continues every day at the highest levels.

The bottom line? We cannot halt the ravages of climate change no matter what we do. The greenhouse gasses trapped in our upper atmosphere will stay there unless some brilliant society creates a technology – probably well into the future – to reverse a process that has not stopped since time on earth began. We can only minimize the damage we create going forward, and it seems that this will continue to be the biggest struggle the planet will ever face. Today, we are dealing with crippling economic realities. But tomorrow, will battles for food and water cripple our ability to survive as a species?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder which of my following generations will face that wall?